How To Go From CS Major To CEO

Larry Chiang scandalously shows granular tid-bits in how to start as an entrepreneur. He edits the Bloomberg BusinessWeek channel “What They Don’t Teach You at Business School”. After Chiang’s Harvard Law keynote, Harvard Business wrote: “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School“ (its the same title as his NY Times bestseller). If you read his scandalously awesome “What a Supermodel Can Teach a Stanford MBA” and “How to Get Man-Charm”, you will like his latest post:

How To Go From CS Major To CEO

By Larry Chiang

I have this theory that its easier to be a CEO as a CS Major than it is for CEOs to learn CS skills.

This theory makes me EXTREMELY popular at engineering schools, but in the real world, CS Majors often get pitched to be the bitch.

What I mean is that a team of two business school students try to “hire” us CS majors. By hire, I mean pay us with pre-funding, pre-revenue, pre-tee worthless stock.

Well, I’m not down for that deal…

Here are 7 tips for us CS Majors to be CEO:

-1- Pitch or Be the Bitch.
Beating the Catch-22 of perfect product vs. perfect pitch.

This is 99% of the apple pie…

Ready for it?! YOU are going to learn to pitch / sell / promote / demo / pitch. Right now there are zero CS classes on “selling”. I’ve boiled down the difficulties of selling into 6 easy tid-bits.

-2- Practice promoting somebody else’s product

Lets say your friend is launching a website.

Help them pitch it. It doesn’t have to be a part-time job, just do it for a weekend or at a conference or at a ‘demo night’ where they’re demo-ing. Your goal is just to get comfortable promoting. And it is best to practice with a product that you’re not emotionally attached to.

Your exercise is to improve your selling skills – Most OTJ (on the job) selling experience involves promoting your own stuff. When we hear rejection we don’t stay out there…, we hole up and work on a better product.

When we pitch out buddie’s product, if we hear ‘no’, we stay out and we keep selling.

BENEFIT: this will help us sell our own product even though it won’t be perfect.

-3- Start a lemonade stand business to learn the art of selling.

You name the legendary entrepreneur, and I will name you their lemonade stand business

Tony Hsieh – worm farm
Luke Nosek – tutoring
Kasey Cross – sold hand bags before she sold Menlo Logic
Tom Cruise – whore house
Marc Andressen – ?
Steve Jobs + Wosniak – joke hotline

My lemonade stand business is selling iPhone charges at conferences

Another lemonade stand business I have is hosting events where VCs pay to pitch us entrepreneurs.

The exercise of a lemonade stand gets us to work and invigorate our baby entrepreneur muscles. Here is a step that might make it dead easy to get on the CS major path to CEO.

-4- Practice selling something (with me, Larry Chiang) that is point-blank easy to sell.

For example, sell blankets at a concert. All you have to do is buy a few $3 blankets from Target and sell for $20. The primary sales method is simply to show and wave your merchandise.

CS Majors who became CEOs were at Draper Fisher Jurvetson's poker night

-5- Promote At An Industry Conference

Start by picking a product you like and trying to promote it throughout the conference.

In essence, you’re combining all three of the last 3 tips. But you’re doing it in a place that matters… your industry’s conference.

-6- *ADVANCED*
Promote at Someone Else’s Booth.

People who start companies are always short of staff come demo day. This is 10x more true if you buy a booth.

Help out the founder team and help yourself by promoting at their booth. There’s a method to meeting, greeting and closing expo attendees that pass by your booth.

For example, at AppNation, 20+ Stanford entrepreneurs were allowed to promote their app. I got to coach them in how to promote. See notes on the sales techniques of how to work a booth if you email me for them… larry at larrychiang dot com.

-7- Closing for a Cell Number

CS majors can close the gap from tech to CEO by asking for other CEOs cell phone number.

Before you ask for it, you will have to sell yourself a little and you might meet up with some temporary rejection.

For example, when selling a CEO you to give you their personal cell phone number, there might be push-back.

You: Hey can I get your cell phone number?
Them: No, no email is best.
You: I like email too. I wont call your cell, especially late night. Ok?!
Them: Hahaa ok.

Having the street smarts to deal with a temporary ‘no’ is very important in the journey from CS major to CEO. And it leads to my next tip.

-8- Dealing with Rejection. Learn to love the waitlist.

Embrace the rejection that you will see in the market and your likelihood of success rises. CS majors rising to CEO adapt to life on a waitlist in the business world. In the most street smart maneuver ever, learn to love the waitlist by selling yourself into the “second supplier” status.

Buyers can say no to the CEO selling whatever, but it is very difficult to say no to someone with tech expertise selling you the idea on being second supplier. Street smart buyers look to game the system with back-up plans and alternative suppliers. A knowledgable CS major charming to be ‘second supplier’ is pretty hard to say no to.

-9- *ADVANCED* Network at a Party You Were Not Invited To

Practice selling your company and yourself by going from crashing a party to VIP. It takes a lot of sales skill to convince the host or the President that after you’ve crashed the party you should be shown around by them. The skills required include:
– Accelerated networking ability
– Condensed concise elevator pitches
– Able to listen really well
– Wrangle and host even though you’re an uninvited guest.
– Clear at remembering names and introduce people with flattering snippets

You do all this promotion/sales/marketing work so that you put yourself in a position to sell your own stuff. Normally, you and another person develop or code a project. One of you will now have to promote it. Hiring a third non-technical co-founder does not work.*

### BONUS ###
Here is the four leaf clover at the end of the yellow brick road:

Tweak the product you’re selling by 20%, orient it to solve a slightly different problem and ‘Boom!’ It is a company with immediate revenue prospects.

*** BONUS ***
a party invite for you:
http://economist.eventbrite.com/
What a Supermodel Can Teach a Harvard MBA
If you liked this…

Larry’s mentor Mark McCormack wrote this in 1983. His own book came out 09-09-09. It is called ‘What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School‘

This post was drafted in an hour and needs your edits… email me if you see a spelling or grammatical error(s)… larry@larrychiang com

Larry Chiang started his first company UCMS in college. He mimicked his mentor, Mark McCormack, founder of IMG who wrote the book, “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School”. Chiang is a keynote speaker and bestselling author and spoke at Congress and World Bank.

Text or call him during office hours 11:11am or 11:11pm PST +/-11 minutes at 650-283-8008. Due to the volume of calls, he may place you on hold like a Scottsdale Arizona customer service rep. If you email him, be sure to include your cell number in the subject line. If you want him to email you his new articles…, ask him in an email
You can read more equally funny, but non-founder-focused-lessons on Larry’s Amazon blog .